Director of Information Systems

About The Role

BURN is seeking a Director of Information Systems to oversee the company's entire enterprise technology landscape, including internal systems, infrastructure, security, and delivery capabilities across all operational markets. This role has full authority to build, buy, or outsource solutions and is accountable for meeting service level agreements (SLAs). The Director will manage infrastructure and security as a service for the product organization, ensuring a unified foundation for both enterprise and product functions. Note that product software, including embedded firmware, customer applications, and the product cloud/PAYGO platform, is managed by the Connected Products team under the CPO. This position provides the necessary infrastructure and security for those systems and manages enterprise-side integration points, such as payment-to-finance reconciliation into NAV.

Duties And Responsibilities

• Enterprise Technology Strategy & Budget: Define and implement the technology strategy for internal systems and IT operations globally. Manage the IT and internal software budget, covering licensing, cloud hosting, hardware, vendor contracts, and staffing. (Connectivity/SIM budgets are managed by Connected Products.)
• Internal Tools Management: Exercise complete authority over decisions to build, buy, or outsource all internal tools, including ERP and NAV integration, CRM and agent applications (Buisy, Nexus), ESS, intranet, knowledge base, and helpdesk tooling. Lead the Internal-Tools Delivery team responsible for integrating purchased tools, managing internal builds, overseeing outsourced development, quality assurance, maintenance, and ensuring SLA adherence.
• Demand Interface & Product Owners: Collaborate with CPO-side Product Managers through the quarterly prioritization council to receive and prioritize demand. Assess capacity and commit to a delivery roadmap. Maintain 1-2 Product Owners to translate roadmaps into actionable backlogs and acceptance criteria. Report on delivery performance against SLAs.
• Infrastructure, NOC & Enterprise Systems: Design, deploy, and operate 24/7 IT infrastructure across all factories and offices, encompassing networks, servers, endpoint security, cloud services, and the Network Operations Centre. Ensure the availability and integration of core enterprise business systems (ERP, finance, sales, HR). Provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service to the Connected Products team with defined SLAs.
• Cybersecurity, Data Protection & Risk Management: Oversee the security stack and its active management, including Data Loss Prevention (DLP), endpoint protection, identity alerting, disk encryption, and awareness training. Ensure compliance with data protection regulations (GDPR and local laws like the Kenya Data Protection Act). Manage the IT risk register, business continuity, and disaster recovery plans. The security baseline will apply to both the enterprise and product organizations.
• Asset & Estate Governance: Maintain the company's asset register as the definitive record for the device estate. Reconcile the endpoint estate (currently ~1,800 devices visible to endpoint protection against ~400 reconciled records) and implement device lifecycle management with IT Operations.
• IT Governance & Service Management: Establish and enforce IT governance frameworks, policies, and standards. Chair the IT Steering Committee. Manage the helpdesk service model and the build-out of IT Service Management (ITSM) processes, including ticketing, SLAs, escalation paths, and user lifecycle management, to support staff across all markets.
• Vendor & Partner Management: Manage software, infrastructure, and IT services vendors, as well as outsourced development partners, ensuring quality, cost-effectiveness, and strategic alignment. (Connectivity vendors like MNOs and IoT SIM providers are managed by Connected Products.)
• Team Leadership & Organisational Development: Build and lead the Information Systems department (approximately 35 people) through direct reports including the Head of Internal-Tools Delivery, the Head of IT, and a Project Manager / Chief of Staff. Confirm or recruit into acting roles and foster team development and retention during organizational change.

First-Year Delivery Book (Indicative)

• Asset Estate Reconciliation: Close the discrepancy between approximately 1,800 endpoint-visible devices and 400 reconciled register records, establishing a reliable system of record.
• ERP Resilience: Implement backup infrastructure and a tested disaster recovery plan for the locally hosted ERP system.
• M365 License Optimization: Audit and optimize the M365 license estate, valued at approximately $250,000 annually, focusing on counts, tiers, and alternative solutions.
• Telephony Replacement & CX Automation: Migrate from the current telephony platform (costing approximately $160,000 annually) and implement IVR, robocall automation, and call center enablement across four markets.
• ITSM & User Lifecycle Implementation: Establish ticketing standards, SLAs, incident and escalation processes, and device management procedures.
• Cloud & Monitoring Enhancements: Execute AWS infrastructure-as-code migration, AD migration, implement unified server/network/M365 monitoring, and ensure server room power redundancy.
• Security Stack Completion: Implement DLP and associated policies, execute security audit action items, manage active endpoint protection, set up identity alerting, enforce disk encryption, and conduct awareness campaigns.

Additional Information

Qualified female candidates are encouraged to apply. BURN does not charge any fees during the recruitment process.